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Visited this place today - Little Morton Hall! Still up 500 years (ish) later. Spoke to the surveyor who says the tower moves a few mm (13) in a cycle over the year and depending weather, but its not sagging any more than it already had when they started measuring, which they do 3 x a year, 9 years back!

I think we have to keep some perspective here . A guy always moans to me that “ his friends” EV caught on fire due to a battery issue - therefore all ev’s are bad . Personally I have panels on the roof not in it . My assumption is a panel is easier to replace with a different spec / size if need be . You can get bird wire to put round the edges to stop nesting birds etc . As always the quality of the installer is the weak point in the link . I deliberately choose an installer who literally lives 5 minutes away from me - so far I’ve not needed to visit them .

there's nothing un-aesthetic about the GSE panels in my opinion. people come to our place and say things like "i didn't know you had PV. i couldn't see the panels". it's not like everyone walks around looking up at the roof! i can see how that would put you off but it has to be the exception. there are always stories of bad experiences of everything and if you let them affect you you'd never do anything!

I think it is a myth that buildings "settle" Yes timber will shrink and warp. Screw pops are usually the result of poor workmanship. Plasterboard needs to be flat onto what it is screwed to. If the joists are not level then some boards will not be touching the joist and the screw will be trying to bend the plasterboard to touch, and it's just wound up like a spring and screws will pop. But most definitely the builders problem to fix. Hint: any that are not visible from 2M just give the loose plaster / filler / paint that is covering it a little encouragement to fall off so it is visible from 2M.

We have our planning permission but fall under the new regs so for Part O Overheating we have to pass either the simplified model or the dynamic model. I have created my own spreadsheet and by changing nearly all my windows to opening and to opening inwards to get round the arms reach criteria and a few minor size changes to increase ventilation we have just scraped through as a pass. My architect has given me my sketchup file and this weekend I plan to start looking at the Thermal Dynamic modelling TM59 with Part O adjustments using TAS software. The simplified model does not take into account the MVHR or the overhang shading so I am hoping by spending a bit of time and money on the software I can keep some of my fixed windows. As this is a new reg if any one wants to look at my spreadsheet I have attached it below. I’m a Mac user so if you run into any problems on Microsoft excel let me know and I can amend it. Thanks @craigfor your help so far. It’s been a steep learning curve to get this far so if I can help any one else on their journey that would be nice. So I’m off to start another steep learning curve using the software, just preparing with a big breakfast and lots of coffee. Any tips on the software welcome. https://kb.goodhomes.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/220720_FHH-Part-O-guidance-Final-LT.pdf#page44 https://www.edsl.net/tas-engineering-downloads/ Part O Calculations Simplified method.xlsx

@alexo Regarding the blinds, can you open the outer leaf to access the blinds? Ours are effectively 4G. A triple glazed unit with a separately hinged outer pane of glazing that protects the external blind. Are yours the same?

A gram of tritium produces about 0.36W. You can find tritium in most water, needs to be centrifuged out. So to make a small 10 kW generator, you would need about 28 kg of tritium. And lead lined panties, which you have already.

Why we have launched, after a 30 year delay, a new satellite to look at the lower atmosphere. It will help establish the link between particulates and cloud types/cover on the global temperatures. Will be posting some stuff up about it later in my Weekly Reads.

Why was it not put in the tallest part of the loft. sorry but that’s fairly crap and needs moving over. Don’t just think about the insulation, what about the broken airtight layer, your asking for trouble with that void above the tank. im afraid I’m on building controls side. move the tank, re plumb it and fix the insulation.

I stripped and replaced a slate roof back in the 80's you will need a minimum of 20% 'new'slates IMHO. To get a whole roof of reclaimed slate will be an expensive business I would go with the Spanish slate others have suggested it will be quicker and easier.

Yes 18mm plywood is fine. And Class 3 is what you need - that just stands for exterior grade nowadays. No other preparation needed but I would try to avoid the really cheap Far Eastern hardwood plywood as it can have losts of voids.

The Building Regulations can't cover every eventuality but it'd be Part K. I would say that because there is no fall risk along that edge then you do not need the full edge protection. It would essentially be a 'demarcation' barrier. However, I would make the demarcation barrier suitable for p3.3 in Part K - that is, it can't be climbed over/defeated by children. So it'd basically have to be full edge protection except for the full restraint forces... so in reality, probably just the same as along the other two edges. Note that the flat roof area does need to comply with p3.4 as green roofs do need occasional maintenance, so be prepared to justify the lack of guarding on that section of roof.

absolutely. and also all relative to your risk appetite. tbh, if i had enough land and there was unobstructed sunlight to it i probably would've gone for ground mount but i want to use our remaining land for a garden and we have trees around us so with the panels being on the roof they should get a bit more sunlight.

i don't think it's off-topic and is good discussion 🙂

We have similar windows, may be the same, with the internal blind. 1. Those plastic bits look like transit protection, at least we certainly don’t have them, so I would have thought they should all have been removed. 2. It must be possible to adjust the blinds but I don’t know how and never had to, the instructions should give a clue. 3. The water, that’s got to be wrong as well, at least we’ve never had that. You need to go back to the supplier/installer and raise all these points for rectification, I’ve no doubt you paid good money for them and the sales of goods act says they should be free from minor defect. It doesn’t look like they are. Best check everything else while you’re at it, I suspect you have already.

PV fires are clearly rare but not exceptional. There was a report in The Independent about them. There were 66 reported fires caused by roof PV systems in the first half of 2023 which was the same number as the whole of 2019. Likely a reflection on the number of new installations and ageing systems. Although it didn’t break the numbers down in that detail. Bit off topic so shall bow out.

The aesthetic is the draw here. Other than that it just seems all disadvantages to me. Panels can fail and need replacing. How easy is it to replace failed panels without compromising the roof especially years later. I opted to not fit PV to our roof at all as we have the garden space to hide them on the ground. The thing that sealed the deal for me was a friend built a house, moved in, and a few months later a cable fault in a PV panel set the roof on fire. Took another year to rebuild it.

Get an electric car and use the excess to charge it? I have had both 'free' (or almost free) motoring since mid May and 'free' DHW since mid April.

Not sure this is practicable, but I'd consider putting some other wee beastie in there which predates the moth larvae. Once that food source disappears -maybe- beastie will pack its bags and go too? Naaaaaahhh, too simple.

To answer my own question, a quick Google suggests that pumped storage or compressed air offer around twice the round trip efficiency of hydrogen. And with much simpler technology. Obviously pumped storage is location dependent. I can feel a Heath Robinson project coming on... I've got land 50m above my house...

Heat your domestic hot water is the easy and obvious one. It will reduce your HW bills to close to £nil for much of the summer. The next obvious one is use all your big domestic appliances like washing machine, dishwasher etc one at a time at around mid day.

There's a lesson here which I wish I'd known before I built our roof terrace. If you're planning a balcony or roof terrace, think about the balustrade. How will you mount it? I think it's a bad idea to bolt it to the roof and penetrate the roof covering and have to rely on sealing around the bolts. Also I wasn't happy to bolt it to the copings. Their function is to keep water out of the wall so not a good idea to penetrate them. Also, for strength I'd have been relying on the mortar bond between the copings and the GRP cap across the top of the wall which I wasn't happy about. How will you achieve the required 1100 mm height required by building regs? Doing it the way I did passed BC, but I do take the point that somebody could step onto the parapet. If I had my time again, I'd build that roof without a parapet and just take the GRP across to the edge and down onto a fascia board. It would have saved me a lot of money in building the parapet (bricks, copings, GRP flashings, rain outlets) and I could have used an off the shelf balustrade system rather than having to fabricate something. I didn't realise the parapet would be a hassle it was and was convinced by others it would look nice!

Using a battery to provide direct electric heating sounds a bit nuts. Running your heat pump with it makes a bit more sense.

This one has the greatest utility value as your home is quite energy efficiency already. You don't mention charging and EV?

I didn't like the idea of penetrating the GRP or the copings with the balustrade brackets so I used fascia mounts.

Was after the price per sqm for the kit/superstructure, not the finished article.

MBC and at least a couple of other specialist passive house suppliers use warm-slab construction as standard. The MBC SE knows his stuff and he has probably designed over a thousand such slabs. BTW, it's not just any EPS; it's a special construction grade, designed for load bearing. There is typically EPS 300 under the ring-beams and EPS 100 under the main floor pan. It our case there were two load-bearing cross beams so the main 100mm pads only spanned some 3½m and had an extra 100mm (i.e 200mm deep) cross braises every 2m or so. Have a search on YouTube: there are some really good time lapses of some MBC builds. Incidentally, I mate of mine had a house in Texas in the Houston Bay on what was essentially reclaimed swamp. This type of reinforced slab is the standard construction technique in his area.

Pretty much any builder in the UK knows how to dig a 600×1000mm (or whatever depth is used for local soil types) trench-type foundation and fill it full of concrete. Making an insulated slab is still (in the UK) really a specialist exercise, so the crew needs to know what they are doing and have a true quality work ethic. The actual sequencing of the build and pour is very tight so the crew need to be on the ball. In our case, the concrete was a little wet and the weather cold. The concrete is power-floated to finish and level to 1-2 mm across the entire base and the time window in the set where it is firm enough to walk on but still workable is quite narrow. If you don't do it during this window, then you might end up having to power plane the finished slab. Our crew foreman stayed on site over night and started about 3 AM! The approach doesn't fit well with some soil types, especially if there is a change in type across the pad. Tree roots running near or under the pad are an absolute no-no. You need to have a pukka soil survey including cores across the site and this is probably around £3+K today. The SE uses to spec out the sub-base. But we went from a hole in the ground that 100s of birds were using as a shallow lake to a finished slab complete with UFH loops fitted in just over a week. It was amazing to watch the process.

go on line and find cable calculator which will give you voltage drop etc over the distance you want and use double the minimum size - https://www.doncastercables.com/technical-help/

Yesterday we exchanged contracts on the purchase of a house in Lymington and on the same day we submitted a planning application to demolish the house and build a new house in its place. Probably Timber Frame, definitely to Passiv Haus standards (fabric first etc), 225 m^2, no fossil fuels but plenty of solar complemented by batteries. We have done this before with a TF house in 2009, a small development of brick and block houses in 2015/16, and an ICF house built into a hill in 2017. We hope for a simple, fast build with a high quality result. One thing we have learnt is to always be ahead of events and don't change your mind. Let's see

The slashing of pollution from shipping in 2020 led to a big “termination shock” that is estimated have pushed the rate of global heating to double the long-term average, according to research... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/30/termination-shock-cut-in-ship-pollution-sparked-global-heating-spurt

And Muffing the Mule is still illegal in most countries

Does it have thermal mass?

😂 Quite possibly. However looking back at the quote they gave me, it was clear they were intending to do a near passive install. They quoted for fitting with straps and Iso-Chemie Bloco One as standard for example. Which is far better than the terribly thin Bloco 600 I ended up with!

If I had enough land I’d panel every inch of the ground . Install a wind turbine everywhere . Probably invest in a small nuclear reactor also .

It can feel very hurt and sometimes become tearful when subjected to criticism and scornful remarks.

Worse yet, having to second guess weirdly drawn details, like this....